Researchers develop smartphone-compatible spectrometer

WASHINGTON — Researchers at Zhejiang University in China have developed a wireless handheld spectrometer that is compatible with smartphones and could be used for point-of-care diagnosis in remote locations, according to a study published in the journal Biomedical Optics Express. “Many home-made portable spectrometers use a smartphone camera to acquire data and a phone cradle that contains other necessary optics,” said Fuhong Cai, one of the study’s authors, in a statement. “The cradle can be hard to align correctly and makes it awkward to wave the smartphone over the body.” Rather than using a smartphone camera to acquire images, the new spectrometer uses a commercially available complementary metal-oxide-semiconductor camera that wirelessly transmits images to a smartphone. They also used it to scan a person’s hand, obtaining a 16-second video containing 200 spectral images. From the 3D spectral images, the researchers could distinguish five fingers and the palm and saw differences in hemoglobin distribution in various parts of the hand. “We want to develop ways to use machine learning algorithms to analyze the massive amounts of data that could be collected with the portable spectra imager,” said Sailing He, a member of the research team, in a statement.